in the production of the geese, and our author proceeds to relate how “all treis (trees) that ar casein in the seis be proces of tyme apperis first wormeetin (worm-eaten), and in the small boris and hollis (holes) thairof growis small worms.”  Our author no doubt here alludes to the ravages of the Teredo, or ship-worm, which burrows into timber, and with which the barnacles themselves are thus confused.  Then he continues, the “wormis” first “schaw (show) thair heid and feit, and last of all thay schaw thair plumis and wyngis.  Finaly, quhen thay ar cumyn to the just mesure and quantite of geis, thay fle in the aire as othir fowlis dois, as was notably provyn, in the yeir of God ane thousand iii hundred lxxxx, in sicht of mony pepyll, besyde the castell of Petslego.”  On the occasion referred to, Boece tells us that a great tree was cast on shore, and was divided, by order of the “laird” of the ground, by means of a saw.  Wonderful to relate, the tree was found not merely to be riddled with a “multitude of wormis,” throwing themselves out of the holes of the tree, but some of the “wormis” had “baith heid, feit, and wyngis,” but, adds the author, “they had no fedderis (feathers).”

Unquestionably, either “the scientific use of the imagination” had operated in this instance in inducing the observers to believe that in this tree, riddled by the ship-worms and possibly having barnacles attached to it, they beheld young geese; or Boece had construed the appearances described as those representing the embryo stages of the barnacle geese.

Boece further relates how a ship named the Christofir was brought to Leith, and was broken down because her timbers had grown old and failing.  In these timbers were beheld the same “wormeetin” appearances, “all the hollis thairof” being “full of geis.”  Boece again most emphatically rejects the idea that the “geis” were produced from the wood of which the timbers were composed, and once more proclaims his belief that the “nature of the seis resolvit in geis” may be accepted as the true and final explanation of their origin.  A certain “Maister Alexander Galloway” had apparently strolled with the historian along the sea-coast, the former giving “his mynd with maist ernist besynes to serche the verite of this obscure and mysty dowtis.”  Lifting up a piece of tangle, they beheld the seaweed to be hanging full of mussel-shells from the root to the branches.  Maister Galloway opened one of the mussel-shells, and was “mair astonis than afore” to find no fish therein, but a perfectly shaped “foule, smal and gret,” as corresponded to the “quantity of the shell.”  And once again Boece draws the inference that the trees or wood on which the creatures are found have nothing to do with the origin of the birds; and that the fowls are begotten of the “occeane see, quhilk,” concludes our author, “is the caus and production of mony wonderful thingis.”